Greg Sterling says, “In the beginning, there was no light, and marketers were forced to rely on “gut feeling” when it came to assessing the success of marketing initiatives. We simply lacked the tools and information needed to scientifically conceive of and measure the effectiveness of our efforts.

Even as more effective data analytics tools started to become available, many marketers preferred to trust intuition over the data. Intuition became prized in the C-suite, and taking action based on gut feeling was valued over the hard work of crunching data and formulating rational strategies.

As recently as 2002, executive search firm Christian & Timbers found that 45 percent of executives “rely more on instinct than facts and figures to run their businesses,” according to a Harvard Business Review report. That’s a pretty alarming statistic.

Unfortunately for marketers driven by creative instinct, today’s businesses are increasing demands for marketing teams to be able to show a tangible ROI to justify their budgets. Marketers simply have to do better. Your gut feeling just isn’t good enough anymore.

From art to science

Marketers didn’t always have data analytics tools available to them to enable them to quantitatively and qualitatively measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. In the past, determining marketing success was primarily an intuitive exercise”.

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